It is vi­tal that we move to­wards a green­er econ­o­my. This isn't re­al­ly news to any­one with pass­ing knowl­edge of cli­mate change or its ef­fects. Chil­dren learn quite ear­ly about the im­por­tance of pro­tect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, the ozone lay­er and even about the tenets of re­cy­cling.

Learn­ing about the im­por­tance of a green­er world is vi­tal to de­vel­op­ing the cul­ture nec­es­sary to tran­si­tion away from our old modes of en­er­gy pro­duc­tion. Tran­si­tion­ing is im­por­tant. The 2015 Paris Agree­ment em­bod­ies the glob­al chal­lenge to hold glob­al tem­per­a­ture in­creas­es to two de­grees, prefer­ably 1.5 de­grees, and es­tab­lish ways to adapt to a warmer world. It's worth tak­ing a look at why cli­mate change ac­tion is so im­por­tant to the fu­ture of the world we live in.

We're al­ready see­ing omi­nous signs of cli­mate change and its im­pacts on our lives. Cli­mate change is de­fined as a change in av­er­age con­di­tions such as tem­per­a­ture and rain­fall in a par­tic­u­lar re­gion over a long pe­ri­od. Glob­al cli­mate change refers to the av­er­age long term changes across the en­tire plan­et. Of course, earth's cli­mate has al­ways been chang­ing how­ev­er sci­en­tists have ob­served un­usu­al trends that go be­yond the nor­mal, nat­ur­al process­es. Ac­cord­ing to NASA stud­ies, earth's av­er­age tem­per­a­ture has been in­creas­ing rapid­ly over the past 150 years, and it helps to un­der­stand what's be­hind these changes that have world­wide reper­cus­sions. The en­tire world has a crit­i­cal stake in un­der­tak­ing ac­tions to ad­dress cli­mate change that have the po­ten­tial to in­flu­ence the kind of world we live in, our health and the strength of economies and ecosys­tems that sup­port life as we know it.

There are sev­er­al fac­tors in­flu­enc­ing cli­mate change but sci­en­tists agree that the shifts be­ing ob­served, with in­creas­ing­ly warmer con­di­tions in the past 50 to 100 years, are an­thro­pogenic in na­ture or man­made. Our cur­rent pat­terns of en­er­gy pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion, trace back to the in­dus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion of the 19th cen­tu­ry and on­ly pro­lif­er­at­ed dur­ing the 20th. These modes of en­er­gy cre­ation, pri­mar­i­ly the burn­ing of fos­sil fu­els, did not ac­count at all for the emis­sions that are pro­duced when they are burned. These emis­sions, known as green­house gas­es, are ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the burn­ing of fos­sil fu­els to pow­er our ve­hi­cles, in­dus­tries and homes and they are warm­ing up the plan­et to dan­ger­ous lev­els. Here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, while our con­tri­bu­tions to glob­al out­put of green­house gas­es that cause cli­mate change is less than one per­cent, our emis­sions rel­a­tive to our size are con­cern­ing. We too have a stake in en­sur­ing that the world ac­tive­ly re­duces emis­sions that lead to the worst im­pacts such as weath­er volatil­i­ty like flood­ing and drought, and food in­se­cu­ri­ty to name a few. In Trinidad and To­ba­go an as­sess­ment done in 2019 of the sec­tors vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate change shows the scale of cli­mate change im­pacts. Agri­cul­ture will suf­fer from re­duced rain­fall, salt­wa­ter in­tru­sion and more pests. Coastal com­mu­ni­ties and in­dus­tri­al ports will be at risk be­cause of sea lev­el rise caused by melt­ing po­lar ice caps. Even tourism could be se­vere­ly af­fect­ed as beach ero­sion and the loss of bio­di­ver­si­ty in our forests and reefs un­der­mines the ap­peal of our tourist des­ti­na­tions. There are a few cli­mate change cen­tred frame­works al­ready un­der­way in T&T in­clud­ing the NDC im­ple­men­ta­tion plan. Af­ter the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Paris Agree­ment in 2018, we've com­mit­ted to a 15 per­cent re­duc­tion in green­house gas emis­sions from our three main emit­ting sec­tors, pow­er gen­er­a­tion, trans­port and in­dus­try by 2030. Our sec­ond is re­duc­ing emis­sions by 30 per­cent in pub­lic trans­porta­tion al­so by 2030. Un­der the Paris Agree­ment we are ob­lig­at­ed to track our progress in meet­ing these tar­gets and re­port on this progress to the Unit­ed Na­tions. Sev­er­al stake­hold­ers are in­volved in gath­er­ing all the re­quired da­ta, rang­ing from the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment to the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty to the emit­ters them­selves whether they are en­er­gy com­pa­nies, man­u­fac­tur­ers or pub­lic en­ti­ties. In Trinidad and To­ba­go, most of our green­house gas emis­sions are pro­duced by the in­dus­tri­al sec­tor. Un­der the NDC im­ple­men­ta­tion plan, one of the many ini­tia­tives ex­pect­ed by the in­dus­tri­al sec­tor is to re­duce vent­ing and flar­ing, or es­sen­tial­ly burn­ing off ex­cess fos­sil fu­els to achieve a 15 per­cent cut. They will al­so have to em­brace more en­er­gy ef­fi­cient tech­nolo­gies to meet this goal. There are oth­er ini­tia­tives built in­to the Paris Agree­ment that are aimed at en­cour­ag­ing na­tions to re­duce their emis­sions. Over the years, there has been a sug­ges­tion that car­bon emis­sions come at a cost. For ex­am­ple, if a busi­ness or gov­ern­ment was made to pay a tax for their emis­sions based on the al­ready well-es­tab­lished pol­luter pays prin­ci­ple, it would mo­ti­vate them to emit less green­house gas and in­cen­tivise oth­ers to find ways to off­set those emis­sions; this is known as a car­bon pric­ing mech­a­nism. T&T is now ex­plor­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of a car­bon pric­ing mech­a­nism as well as the po­ten­tial for par­tic­i­pa­tion in car­bon mar­kets where car­bon cred­its are bought and sold there­by rais­ing fur­ther fund­ing to fi­nance cli­mate ac­tion. Of course, we can't dis­cuss cli­mate change ac­tions with­out ex­am­in­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor which is the ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to eco­nom­ic growth in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Pow­er gen­er­a­tion is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue to move to more en­er­gy ef­fi­cient com­bined cy­cle pow­er plants, and even­tu­al­ly to re­new­ables like wind and so­lar. In fact, Trinidad and To­ba­go has al­ready be­gun the shift to­wards re­new­able en­er­gies with the in­stal­la­tion of util­i­ty scale pow­er gen­er­a­tion of 112 megawatts of pow­er. In the trans­port sec­tor, the CNG con­ver­sion roll­out will con­tin­ue. While CNG re­duces car­bon emis­sions, it won't get us any clos­er to the ide­al of ze­ro car­bon where we don't pro­duce any glob­al warm­ing gas­es but it's a step on the way to wean­ing our­selves off of fos­sil fu­el burn­ing ve­hi­cles. Cli­mate ex­perts from the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment fore­see the de­vel­op­ment of an ‘E-mo­bil­i­ty’ pol­i­cy, meant to ac­tive­ly pro­mote the use of elec­tric ve­hi­cles putting our de­car­boniza­tion strate­gies in­to high gear. In oth­er sec­tors, such as agri­cul­ture for ex­am­ple, adap­ta­tion mea­sures in­clude in­stalling wa­ter sav­ing ir­ri­ga­tion and on-farm wa­ter stor­age fa­cil­i­ties. Ad­di­tion­al rec­om­men­da­tions for pro­tect­ing against the rav­ages of cli­mate change in­clude the build­ing of sea walls along our vul­ner­a­ble coast­lines to keep ris­ing seas at bay. Al­so pro­posed is the stricter en­force­ment of build­ing codes that take in­to ac­count ris­ing sea lev­els and flood­ing from tor­ren­tial show­ers that are pro­ject­ed to be­come more fre­quent. These ini­tia­tives would re­quire ac­tive, mon­i­tored and sus­tained pol­i­cy changes to shape the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of our so­ci­ety.

As we tran­si­tion to a green­er econ­o­my, where will all our en­er­gy sec­tor work­ers go, but even more than that, where will the fu­ture work­ers come from? It's a big ques­tion that plan­ners want to an­swer with a 'Just Tran­si­tion Pol­i­cy' that ad­dress­es the types of skills we will need in a green econ­o­my. There are sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties that lie in the cre­ation of green jobs which are pro­ject­ed to in­crease in de­mand as we adopt new low-car­bon tech­nolo­gies and lessen our re­liance on fos­sil fu­els. There­fore, an­oth­er key plan un­der de­vel­op­ment is the re­train­ing and re­tool­ing of the labour force for par­tic­i­pa­tion in a clean­er, green­er econ­o­my, as well as pro­vid­ing the train­ing for the re­quired skills to de­vel­op fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. Many of the cli­mate change ac­tions will seem re­mote from your every­day life but there is al­so a role for you, the in­di­vid­ual, in T&T's plan to fight cli­mate change. Every one of us can sup­port the goal of a 15 per­cent re­duc­tion in our green­house gas emis­sions. You can be more con­scious of the elec­tric­i­ty you con­sume. T&TEC has al­ready dis­trib­uted en­er­gy ef­fi­cient LED light bulbs to some con­sumers. You can choose to buy en­er­gy ef­fi­cient ap­pli­ances. If you are a ve­hi­cle own­er, you might switch to CNG or con­sid­er the pur­chase of an elec­tric ve­hi­cle. Your choic­es mat­ter. Every cit­i­zen has a role to play in the cli­mate ac­tions Trinidad and To­ba­go must take to se­cure our fu­ture. They all add up to the na­tion­al goal of achiev­ing a low car­bon hori­zon and adapt­ing to the world's chang­ing cli­mate.